Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Best Music Of 2011December 28, 2011 How does the saying go? "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Overquoted, tossed off and attributed to the likes of Elvis Costello, Steve Martin and Frank Zappa, there might be some truth to those damning words, whose author remains unknown. After all, what makes music so powerful? It's the music, of course, not necessarily words about it.

But sometimes dancing about architecture is the best way to make sense of something that doesn't inherently make sense. Words can provide context and illuminate the unknown, and in 2011, our favorite books about music were mostly revealing biographies and wide-spanning analyses. Chosen by the NPR Music staff (and one of NPR's music librarians), these books are interpretations of a rich history written by the people who made the music and those who it affected.

Honorable Mentions:

New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans by John Swenson Keystone Korner: Portrait of Jazz Club by Kathy Sloane Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz For Justice by Tad Hershorn I Listen to the Wind That Obliterates My Traces: Music in Vernacular Photographs 1880-1955 by Steve Roden

Thursday, December 22, 2011

This extraordinary story is not an exaggeration. New Orleans criminals routinely assassinate witnesses to crimes. The city's musicians have corageously stood up to these criminals and spoken out repeatedly against them. I wrote about this in my book New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans. Glen David Andrews is one of the central characters in the book. Here's the story from today's New Orleans Times-Picayune:

New Orleans musician saved from robbers by barking dogPublished: Wednesday, December 21, 2011, 9:31 PM By Naomi Martin The Times-Picayune

Had it not been for the presence of his cousin's pit bull, local musician Glen David Andrews would have been one of the victims robbed at gunpoint outside a Capital One, one of three such armed robberies Monday morning, outside banks in Mid-City, Broadmoor and Gentilly.

View full sizeTimes-Picayune archiveLocal musician Glen David Andrews called 911 when he realized a robbery was in progress. 'I saw them rob hard-working people of everything but they won't get away with this...STAND UP PEOPLE,' he wrote later on his Facebook page. It was 8:45 a.m. Monday when Andrews, his cousin and Blue, a large and rambunctious pit bull, piled into an SUV to go to the Capital One at Canal Street and South Carrollton Avenue.

Andrews, a trombone player, said he was planning to deposit $3,500 from the weekend's work to divide among his six band members.

Around 8:50 a.m., they pulled up to the bank's entrance on the corner where about six people, some with deposit slips in their hands, were waiting for the bank to open. Andrews said two people in the group were young men -- maybe 20 or 21 -- wearing black hooded sweatshirts, standing apart from each other.

As Andrews got out of the passenger side to join the group, Blue began to bark, loudly and incessantly.

A man, walking up to join the bank customers, joked to Andrews: "Hey man, you can't shut your dog up?"

Suddenly, one of the hooded men turned over his shoulder, looked Andrews in the eye and nodded toward the SUV.

The man's voice was calm: "You better leave right now with that dog. We 'bout to rob the bank."

Andrews turned immediately and got back in the SUV's passenger seat, telling his cousin, whose name is also Glen Andrews and is a musician as well, what he just heard. His cousin drove away, calmly.

"Man, I've lived in the hood all my life. When he told me that, I looked at his outfit and I look at the other guy's outfit, I looked at his gestures and by the grace of God I was able to internalize all that in a second to get out of there," Andrews said Wednesday.

While driving away from the bank, Andrews and his cousin saw the hooded men pull bandanas over their faces and force the crowd into a huddle to rob them at gunpoint. It took only seconds. Andrews dialed 911 from his cell phone.

View full sizeNew Orleans Police DepartmentA sketch of a suspect wanted by New Orleans police for armed robbery in connection with an incident outside the Capital One branch at 4141 Canal St. on Monday.A detective later told Andrews that one of the robbery victims was an Iraqi war veteran. Andrews' anger boiled as he recalled recent acts of violence in the city including the killing of a toddler in the B.W. Cooper housing complex. First a 2-year-old girl shot to death, then this? he said.

The bank robberies on Monday occurred in the span of about an hour. New Orleans police believe all three incidents are related, said 3rd District Commander Henry Dean, whose territory includes Mid-City and Gentilly. On Wednesday police released a composite sketch of one of the suspects.

Tuesday night, Andrews vented his frustrations on his Facebook page.

"I saw them rob hard-working people of everything but they won't get away with this...STAND UP PEOPLE," he wrote.

As a well-known musician, Andrews wanted to reach a broad audience with his message that speaking up about crime can help authorities quell it.

But, he acknowledged, he now fears being targeted in retaliation for speaking up about what happened.

"There's a good chance I might get killed now walking down the street," Andrews said. Many of his family members warned him against speaking publicly about the incident.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

This isn't the first time anyone has ever come up with this idea but Peyton does a good job of expressing it. I would take one issue with his many premises, however. Louis Armstrong did not bow and scrape so Miles Davis could turn his back. That's buying into the very mythology Peyton is attacking. Louis Armstrong created American popular music as we know it in all its aspects. If he loved his audience that was show biz just as much as what Lady Gaga does today. Armstrong was in fact a powerful force in the Civil Rights movement who used that power brilliantly and judiciously. Davis, by comparison, sold out, not that I think anything less of him because the music speaks for itself and he was truly great in his own right. I say BY COMPARISON. Armstrong did far more for African Americans than Miles Davis did, not that it's a contest or anything, it just pisses me off to see Armstrong still used as a straw man to illustrate how cool Miles was. You didn't hear that shit from Miles, although he did say a bunch of things to confound people who thought they knew who he was. By the end of his life, when he finally started explaining himself, Miles claimed he wasn't turning his back on his audience anyway. He said he was facing his band members. I will proudly continue to listen to Armstrong, Miles Davis and Nicholas Peyton and I don't care what they call it, it's all cool to me.

About Me

John Swenson has been writing about popular music since 1967. He edited the award-winning website jazze.com for Knit Media and has worked as an editor at Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, Circus, Rock World, OffBeat magazine and been published in virtually every popular music magazine of note over that time. He was a syndicated music columnist for more than 20 years at United Press International and Reuters. Swenson has written 14 published books including biographies of Bill Haley, The Who, Stevie Wonder and The Eagles and co-edited the original Rolling Stone Record Guide with Dave Marsh. He is also the editor of The Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Album Guide.
In another role Swenson is a veteran sports writer who covered the New York Rangers for 30 years, writing pieces for outlets from Rolling Stone to the Associated Press. Swenson is also a veteran horseracing columnist and handicapper who covered the New York racing scene as a columnist for the New York Post and the New Orleans Fair Grounds meet for The Daily Racing Form. His profile on jockey Steve Cauthen: Rise To Stardom, Fall From Grace in Spur Magazine was nominated for an Eclipse Award.